Adherents.com: Religious Groups in Literature

34,420 citations from literature (mostly science fiction and fantasy) referring to real churches, religious groups, tribes, etc. [This database is for literary research only. It is not intended as a source of information about religion.]

shamanism, continued...

"'...This time of year, that means it's about half past midnight, and dawn is in six hours.'

Gordon snorted. 'Astrology.'

'Nope. Astronomy. You white guys don't have a monopoly on science, you know. The Navajo shamans have been watching these skies for over a thousand years.'

Gordon shook his head. 'Like I said,' he insisted. 'Magic, superstition, and astrology.'

West thought it over. 'Maybe shaman isn't the right word. Maybe you'd have more respect if I said rabbi. The shaman is a teacher; he knows the religious laws, the prayers, the medicine, and the history of the People since the beginning of time. What does that sound like to you?'

Gordon paused a long time before answering.

'A rabbi,' he said at last. 'Point conceded.' " [Some other shaman refs. not in DB, but most in DB.]

"...member of the American Magicians Association [American Medical Association]. Thankfully the kindly old AMA shaman-priest, Bob went down to settle with the cashier. "

shamanism

USA

1985

Zelazny, Roger. Trumps of Doom. New York: Arbor House (1985); pg. 19.

"'She started with theosophy, even attended meetings of a local group. She got turned off on it fairly quick, but by then she'd met some people with different connections. Pretty soon she was hanging around with Sufis, Gurdjieffians, even a shaman.' "

"'Most of what I know about this, I learned from my aboriginal friend, but I've thought about it. Sometimes, in my job, I wonder whether rock stars, pop singers, entertainers in the public eye in America, are sort of the contemporary equivalent of shamans.'

"Her tales of the Native American shamen and their powers and secret knowledge began to ring some bells, if not in Angel then certainly in me as well. Spirits in trees and rocks and such weren't something I was ready to accept... "

[Referring to Card's Tales of Alvin Maker series] "The men of Vigor Church had been responsible for a massacre of Indians at Tippy-Canoe, since when they were under a compulsion to confess their crime to any stranger they encountered; nothing less than full confession would staunch the bleeding of their guilty hands. The shaman Tenskwa-Tawa alone can remove the curse. " [More.]

shamanism

USA

2019

Burton, Levar. Aftermath. New York: Warner Books (1997); pg. 235.

Book jacket: "In South Dakota: Jacob Fire Cloud, a Lakota shaman who awaits the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. "; Pg. 235: "The old Indian's name was Jacob Fire Cloud; he was a Lakota medicine man. He had come all the way from South Dakota, following what he claimed to be the voice of the White Buffalo Woman--a sacred prophet of the Indian people, or something like that. " [The Lakota medicine man/shaman is one of main characters in novel. Many chapters about him, and his shamanism/prophecies/spiritual practices. The word 'shamanism' does not appear to be used in novel, but is on book jacket.]

"The Holy Order of Vision, always hospitable to peaceful travelers, had entertained and assisted Shamans and Druids and other priestly representatives, never challenging their beliefs or religious authority. "

"'Xe's a doctor?' I asked, feeling ridiculously dismayed that we hadn't extended the old man mor professional courtesy.

'Kinda. He's sort of a combination of doctor and priest, but I guess you'd have to say he was practicing medicine without a license, by American standards. I've been studying with him since I met him after he'd saved one of my people from rabies.' "

Pg. 69: "Returning to the open doorway, she noticed the object of the shaman's ministrations--a still form on a pallet. ";

Pg. 158: "'Only that it comes from their military leader,' replied the shaman, wishing that the Kag would look elsewhere. 'I have not read it.'

'I want no letter. Whatever the message, its purpose is to mislead us, to make us argue among ourselves. Do you not see this, shaman? The ulaansh had been sent to test our resolve.' ";

Pg. 177: "The Kag rose to his feet, his movements so gradual that Yarkol could examine every change in the muscles of his jaw. The Chief-Among-Chiefs turned on the shaman. 'Is this your idea of truth?' "; PG. 198: "As the shaman became engrossed in sorting through his talismans, a troubling thought intruded... " [Many other refs., not in DB.]

[Back cover] "1722... But their safety is tenuous, as Peter the Great marches his unstoppable forces across Europe. And half a world away, Cotton Mather and Blackbeard the pirate lead a party of colonial luminaries back across the Atlantic to discover what has befallen the Old World. With them sails Red Shoes, a Choctaw shaman whose mysterious connections to the invisible world warn him that they are all moving toward a confrontation as violent as it is decisive . . . " [Red Shoes in of the main characters. Many refs., not in DB.]

"'...back home... shaman cultures liked to connect everything on earth with some ideal cosmic counterpart, didn't they? A particular mountain had its ideal prototype in the sky. The river Tigris had its 'model'--it's transcendent counterpart--in such-and-such a star. These people here go ahead and build the counterpart in full view, opposite the mundane world! Why? The whole point of the counterparts system was to link the earthly state with an invisible reality that was perfectly concrete, of course, but not here. It was always somewhere else, in Heaven.' "

"...in the '60s and '70s, it was fashionable among radical psychotherapists, such as R. D. Laing, to maintain that madness was a higher form of wisdom, a kind of inadvertent shamanism. As a corollary, mental hospitals were represented in novels and movies of that period... as lay monasteries where a few holy fools lived in a state of higher sanity... "

shamanism

world

1999

Hand, Elizabeth. Glimmering. New York: HarperCollins (1997); pg. 207.

"Far away, in a Golden Pyramid, live 6 or 7 shamans. By using sorcerous science they change the most everyday journey into a Millennial Mystery Trip. If you come along, the shamans will transport you to a brand new world! " [More.]

Pg. 35: "She pulled down the ragged neck of her Sibirsk T-shirt to reveal a tattoo of two intertwined circles on her right breast. 'Apprentice shaman. Or should it be sha-woman?' " [More.]; Pg. 75: "On the upside, though, I'm going out on the town with Oksana Telyanina. The Siberian shamaness? She left a message for m e on the Thorn Tree. " [Also pg. 77, 170.]

Book jacket: "Byron, a rebellious young Stargazer, is assigned to investigate the 'Warm Ones'--in other words, to destroy any threat. But when a beautiful human shaman shows him unbelievable truths about his past, his origin, and his destiny, a vampire will discover that his mortal enemy is his living Goddess, the MoonQueen. "; Pg. 40: "'Who leads them?'

'What? No one leads the Warm Ones.'

'Right. Do they have some religious leaders, as should be natural. Their type of Elders?'

'...'Actually, they do. The epicenter of this new religion is someone called the Shaman. That's what perplexing. The Shaman is always some extremely sickly individual who never lasts more than ten years, never even reaches close to thirty. At the end of its tenure, before wasting away, the Shaman chooses another one. It is usually of the opposite gender, much younger in age, and the changing is done by some public copulation.' [Many refs. not in DB. A shaman is a main character in novel.]

Pg. 25: "She picked the younger Angai to be her friend. Angai was the daughter of the shamaness. "; Pg. 26: "Sometimes Nia rode beside the cast of the shamaness. She never got into it, of course. It was full of magic. "; Pg. 27: "Blood came out of her, and she miscarried. The shamaness held a ceremony of purification and a ceremony to avert any further bad occurrences. After that Ti-antai grew better, but very slowly. She was sick well into the winter. " [Extensive references to shamanism throughout novel. Other refs. not in DB.]

"People never pay attention to weather reports; this, I believe, is a constant factor in man's psychological makeup, stemming probably from an ancient tribal distrust of the shaman. You want them to be wrong. If they're right, then they're somehow superior, and this is even more uncomfortable than getting wet. "

"Both his hands lay on the edge of the desk before him, as lax as vegetables The left one showed its pinkish palm to the ceiling, with the creased lines that once, when he was a boy, had led a woman of half-French and half-Shango breeding to predict he would be a great hero. "

"Urging Shawnee into a trot, Kathryn began to post with practiced ease. Moving up and down in the saddle to encounter the bounce of the horse's brisk gait... he had asked her to ride Shawnee, a high-strung thoroughbred... " [Other refs. to this horse.]

Shawnee

Kansas

1989

Denton, Bradley. Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede. New York: William Morrow and Co. (1991); pg. 63.

[Year estimated] Pg. 63: "No one on board was more ancient than Julian. Even before the attack, he was one of the few residents of the Shawnee Nest who could honestly claim to be DNA-made... "; Pg. 65: "'...The Shawnee Nest was responsible for its own security, just as every other Nest is responsible . . .' "; Pg. 66: "Set inside an abandoned salt mine near Kansas City, the Shawnee Nest had been one of the most secure facilities of its kind every built. Its power came from clean geothermal sources. Lead plates and intricate defense systems stood against natural hazards as well as more human threats. " [Other refs. to this place throughout story, but no apparent refs. to actual Shawnee Indians.]

"Burton pushed a lock of lank blond hair from her eyes. A stout, sunburnt woman in khaki shorts and a T-shirt and hiking boots. Like everyone else she smelt strongly of sweat and woodsmoke. She said wearily, 'He got money from the UN because he claimed this was a potential world heritage park, but all I can do is sight surveys while I'm working as a Sherpa.' "

"'...There's nothing wrong with the idea of putting a good Christian in the White House for a change.'

'I thought Jimmy Carter was supposed to have been a good Christian,' said Harod.

'Jimmy Carter was a born-again wimp,' said Sutter. 'A real Christian would have known just what to do with the Ayatollah when that pagan put his hands on American citizens. The Bible says . . . 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' We should've left those Moslem Shee-ite bastards toothless.' "

"Abu Hasir was in his early twenties, tall, swarthy, with curly black hair and the mandatory full beard of some Shiite fundamentalists. "

Shiite

galaxy

2525

Simmons, Dan. Hyperion. New York: Doubleday (1989); pg. 136.

"Two hours after he landed, Captain Kassad stepped out of his ship and broadcast a short announcement. He said that he had been raised as a Muslim. He also announced that interpretation of the Koran since the Shi'ites' seedship says had definitely shown that the God of Islam would neither condone nor allow the slaughter of the innocent, no matter how many jihads were proclaimed by tin-horn heretics like the New Prophet. Captain Kassad gave the leaders of the thirty million [Shi'ite] zealots three hours to surrender their hostages and return to their homes on the desert continent of Qom. " [Other refs. not in DB.]

Shiite

galaxy

2525

Simmons, Dan. Hyperion. New York: Doubleday (1989); pg. 135-136.

"...it was during the short reign of the New Prophet on Qom-Riyadh that Captain Fedmahn Kassad came to the attention of the entire Web. The FORCE:space captain of the only Hegemony ship within two light years of the colony world had been paying a courtesy call when the New Prophet chose to lead thirty million New Order Shi'ites against two continents of Sunni shiopkeepers and ninety thousand resident Hegemony infidels. The ship's captain and five of his executive officers were taken prisoner... Tau Ceti Center demanded that the ranking officer aboard the orbiting HS Denieve settle the situation on Qom-Riyadh, free all hostages, and depose the New Prophet . . . without resorting to the use of nuclear weapons... the mob grew to 300,000 militants kept at bay only by the boat's containment field and the lack of an order to attack by the New Prophet. The New Prophet himself was no longer in the Grand Mosque; he had flown to the northern hemisphere of Riyadh... "

"On Qom-Riyadh a self-appointed fundamentalist Shiite ayatollah rode out of the desert, called a hundred thousand followers to him, and wiped out the Suni Home Rule government within hours. The new revolutionary government returned power to the mullahs and set back the clock two thousand years. The people rioted with joy. "

"The Stacked Deck flew directly from Baghdad to Kabul. Iran was out of the question. The Ayatollah shares many of the Nur's views of wild cards, and he rules his nation in name as well as fact, so even the UN could not secure us permission to land. At least the Ayatollah makes no distinction between aces and jokers--we are all the demon children of the Great Satan, according to him. "

"Like many other followers, Ahmad was convinced that Khomeini was truly the Twelfth Imam, who had vanished from the earth suddenly in the year A.D. 939 with the promise that he would one day return to earth to lead all Islam. " [Many other refs. not in DB. The antagonists of this book are militant Shiite fundamentalists.]

"A... woman in Brussels had asked Salbanda, the Forhilnor spokesperson who met periodically with the media, the simple, direct question of whether he believes in any gods.

And he'd answered--at length... Religious leaders were jockeying for position. The Vatican... was reserving comment, saying only that the pope would address the issue soon. The Wilayat al-Faqih in Iran denounced the alien's words. "

"...the religious networks, where, with sustained and general excitement, the Message [from extraterrestrials] was being discussed... The Message, Ellie believed, was a kind of mirror in which each person sees his or her own beliefs challenged or confirmed... In Kuwait, a man arose who claimed to be the Hidden Imam of the Shiites. "

Shiite

Mars

2057

Robinson, Kim Stanley. Red Mars. New York: Bantam (1993); pg. 372.

"We [Islam] will never have civil war, because we are united by our faith.'

Frank let his expression alone speak the fact of the Shiite heresy, among many other Islamic 'civil wars.' "

Shiite

Mars

2114

Robinson, Kim Stanley. Green Mars. New York: Bantam (1994); pg. 423.

"'...You see the Ahad and Fetah were split over a variety of issues...'

'Sunni-Shiite?' Maya asked.

'No. More conservative and liberal, with the liberals thought to be secular, and the conservatives religious, either Sunni or Shiite...' "

"''Sunnis are fighting Shiites--Lebanon is devastated--the oil-rich states are hated by the oil-poor states--the North African countries are a metanat--Syria and Iraq hate each other--Iraq and Egypt hate each other--we all hate the Iranians, except for the Shiites--and we all hate Israel of course, and the Palestinians too... And everyone hates the Saudis, who are as corrupt as you can get...' "

Shiite

Newmanhome

2100

Pohl, Frederik. The World at the End of Time. New York: Ballantine (1990); pg. 105.

"The funeral was worse than the one the day before. The town meeting had settled very little when it had authorized separate burials for Moslems. Kittamur Haradi was a Moslem, all right, but he was a Sunni. He didn't want his late wife buried with the Shi'ites. So a separate, smaller ditch was dug for the second Moslem sect. "

Shiite

Newmanhome

2103

Pohl, Frederik. The World at the End of Time. New York: Ballantine (1990); pg. 127.

"The Sunni Moslems and the Shi'ites hadn't stopped splintering when they broke into two groups; they schismed again over which way was East, and almost did it again over the calendar. "

"Just to you will I admit I have some whiskey.' The general grinned. 'Do not pass that information on to the Shi'a or the Saudis. Above all, do not tell those arrogant Saudis...' "

Shiite

Syria

1991

Ing, Dean. Butcher Bird. New York: Tom Doherty Associates (1993)

[Book jacket] "An Iraqi garrison in Mosul collapses, dying in convulsion. A Kurd leader does the same way a week later in Al Qimishli, Syria. A Sunni leader in Aleppo, Syria and a Shiite near Damascus follow suit. One by one, the opponents of Syria's Assad are biting the dust. The killer? A nuclear-powered terminator flying high and swift, a tiny stealthy bird that carries death behind its eyes. You can't see it. You can't hear it. But it knows you. " [Multiple refs., not in DB.]

Pg. 17: "...with a shallow wound high on his forehead. Near Damascus, a Shiite moderate suffered the same fate. In the souks, old fears found new life. "; Pg. 19: "For one thing, Clement might even be right; in Syria alone, the Sunni Moslem majority squirmed under the rule of Assad's Alawite Moslems, and Shiites hated them both. "

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